Chapter 289: Red Light Was Not a Driving Lesson

Water climbed the cargo platform while I studied three purchases that suggested the shop had confused emergency assistance with a fucking comedy night.

The first offer cost twenty IP and made anything I knowingly broke apologize using my full name. It was called The Apology Is Mandatory, which sounded less like a skill and more like evidence a prosecutor would enjoy playing twice.

Unless the car could apologize its way back up the platform, I wanted something with a slightly more useful relationship with drowning.

[System: Fair criticism, mate. Although hearing a toilet say Matthew Vane did this would save everyone a bloody investigation.]

The second offer provided an Emergency Emotional Support Forklift for forty-five IP. It lasted one minute, required somebody capable of driving it and disappeared afterward, leaving any raised load to discover gravity without professional supervision.

I looked at the heater, looked at the rising water and decided I already owned enough heavy machinery that didn't care whether I lived.

The third choice was Red Light, Dickhead!, a C+ skill costing fifty-five IP. For two seconds, moving vehicles and projectiles within six meters stopped, provided their centers were inside the area when I used it.

People kept moving normally. Anything caught resumed its earlier motion afterward unless a brake or outside force changed that motion, and the cooldown lasted ninety seconds. It stopped friendly vehicles too, because apparently traffic management hated everyone equally.

Two seconds sounded stingy for fifty-five points, especially when the forklift came with an entire fucking seat.

[System: The seat won't help when you're upside down under a car, champ. Unless you want somewhere comfortable to drown while you reconsider the purchase.]

The other vehicle stopped beside mine. Its passenger opened his door against the rising water and aimed the restraint launcher through my window while the driver tried to reverse against a safety rail.

I bought Red Light and selected Miniature Multitude for permanent replacement. Twelve tiny versions of me would have been useful, but at that moment I needed one version who wasn't being delivered to the harbor with an unpaid parking bill.

The balance dropped to one hundred and five IP. My EXP stayed at twenty-two thousand five hundred, and the little copy icon vanished before I could feel sentimental about the times I had nearly stepped on myself.

The launcher fired. I activated the new skill with its hooked projectile already crossing the gap, and the car beside me stopped shuddering against the rail.

Its driver continued moving into the steering wheel. The hook hung between us while I pulled my head aside, using most of my precious two seconds to appreciate a defensive ability that didn't require becoming harder than a landlord's heart.

Then the hook continued straight through my empty seat and buried itself in the dashboard. The other car's wheels resumed spinning, throwing water over a driver whose opinion of the evening had clearly deteriorated.

[System: There you go, mate. You've invented a pause button that punches passengers in the face, which should make public transport heaps more interesting.]

I would review its commercial uses after we stopped sharing a bathtub with armed idiots.

The platform itself kept descending. It was a fixed dock lift, not a vehicle, and the skill hadn't convinced its hydraulic machinery to reconsider anything.

I pressed the dashboard horn with my tail, pointed at the emergency stop post and shouted through the open window at the nearest worker.

"The other dickheads brought weapons, but I brought a heater, so I felt that gave you a fairly clear favorite here."

He hit the stop. The platform halted with water above the wheels, leaving both cars stranded behind raised rails while the worker ran toward the dock office and shouted for security.

The passenger tried climbing across the roofs. His launcher cable remained buried in my dashboard, so I dragged the loose section across the open door and caught his boot as he stepped down.

He fell backward into his own car rather than the sea. His driver caught an elbow in the mouth, and I decided family loyalty probably had an excellent resignation rate.

The heater still needed a way off the platform. A service ladder ran up the concrete wall, but I couldn't carry the whole assembly while flying, and wishing very hard hadn't appeared in the shop.

Galaxy Brain picked out a cargo hoist above the stop post. Its hook hung over an empty marked loading area, close enough for the worker to have used it during ordinary transfers before my relatives arrived to ruin everyone's shift.

I called the office number printed beside the ladder through my internal phone. The same worker answered with a breathless demand to know who was calling during an emergency.

"I was the snake in the flooded car, and I had a proposal that involved getting me out of your emergency before I became part of the paperwork."

He wanted the armed men contained. I wanted the heater lifted, so we found a beautiful friendship built entirely on not wanting each other's problems.

The office controlled the hoist. I looped its lowered hook through the heater's transport sling, checked the trolley brake and released the straps holding everything to the freight car.

Beside me, the driver finally abandoned reversing and climbed into the rear seat for a second weapon. His passenger shouted that I was stealing the cargo again, which felt unfair when I had been exceptionally consistent about stealing it the first time.

The hoist tightened. I moved onto the sling above the heater, keeping my injured fin clear while the trolley wheels left the flooded deck.

A small cylindrical charge rolled across the other car's roof. Its red light flashed beside the cable before the passenger raised his launcher again, aiming directly at the sling carrying my entire fucking escape plan.

Red Light still needed almost a minute to cool. I had bought the correct answer to a problem and immediately discovered that the problem had brought a friend.